PSF Meeting Minutes for 2009-02-09

A regular meeting of the Python Software Foundation ("PSF") Board of
Directors was held over Internet Relay Chat beginning at 17:00 UTC, 9
February 2009. Steve Holden presided at the meeting. David Goodger
prepared these minutes.

The following members of the Board of Directors were present at the
meeting: Brett Cannon, Stephan Deibel, David Goodger, Raymond
Hettinger, Steve Holden, Martin von Löwis, Tim Peters, and James
Tauber. Also in attendance were Kurt Kaiser (Treasurer), Pat Campbell
(Administrator), and Van Lindberg (PSF legal counsel; joined at
17:34).

RESOLVED, that the PyCon Chairman is authorized to obligate the
PSF under the PyCon 2010 contract (pycon/2010/venue_contract.pdf in
PSF CVS), to be held in Atlanta, Georgia. The contract may be changed
before signing but any changes must be reported to the PSF board and
may not increase the financial obligation assumed by the PSF.

The following are action items carried forward from the 12 January
2009 meeting, as highlighted in the minutes (Section 4, Status of Past
Action Items). Numbers in [brackets] represent the item ID in the PSF
private wiki.

[11] Originally from June 2006, Section 6, PSF Records: The
Board agreed to assemble the existing records in one place, have
them scanned, and enter them into the PSF data repository.
D. Goodger will coordinate this work and maintain the records.
[Update 2008-12-08] D. Goodger will identify the records for
scanning and send photocopies to P. Campbell.

Status: carried forward.

[30] Originally from August 2006, Section 10: T. Peters will
ask the advice of Larry Rosen regarding concerns with the
contributor agreement.

Status: carried forward.

[13] Originally from December 2006, Section 4, Jython Contributor
Agreements: D. Goodger will write to the Jython
contributors and ask them to sign contributor agreement forms, in
combination with item 1 [11] above (transferred from A. Kuchling).

Status: carried forward.

[29] Originally from March 2007, Section 18, Bylaw Change Survey:
S. Holden will call for a separate discussion of changes
to the bylaws [with S. Deibel's help]. Include an affiliation
program [ref. July 2008 section 8].

[17] Originally from 8 September 2008, Section 7, PSF Logo:
D. Goodger will produce final layouts for a PSF logo.

Status: carried forward.

[26] Originally from 13 October 2008, Section 4, PSF Community Award
Certificates: S. Holden will issue PSF Community Award
certificates.

Status: done.

[34] Originally from 8 December 2008, Section 5, Role of
Administrator: D. Goodger and P. Campbell will verify and
update the member contact information.

Status: carried forward.

[36] Originally from 8 December 2008, Section 7, Introduction &
Support for OBOOE: S. Holden will reply to OBOOE that we
are interested in cooperating with them, that we can list them as
cooperating organization once they are set up.

S. Holden noted that our accounts receivable total is now under
$20,000. K. Kaiser: "The AR status has the open invoices for 2007 and
2008 dues. It's too early to start chasing 2009. They will be on the
next AR report."

S. Holden: "A polite 'phone call asking when payment is scheduled will
detect problems early and avoid the issues we've had in the past."

S. Holden noted that we haven't heard from counsel regarding the legal
review of the proposed bylaws changes. "If we don't vote on the
changes today this means we will be bound by the old bylaws" for the
members' meeting (e.g. notice requirements).

M. von Löwis: "I think we do need legal review." The Board agreed,
and noted that we need to approve the exact text.

D. Goodger reported that V. Lindberg (PSF counsel) stated via IM:

I see nothing problematic about the proposed changes. There is a
fair amount of leeway given to corps on how to best approach their
business. I don't see anything that looks objectionable.

As long as these changes are made in accordance with the old
bylaws, these should be fine.

V. Lindberg joined the meeting to suggest some amendments to the
proposed revisions.

The Board agreed to defer voting until the proposed new bylaws changes
have been finalized.

S. Holden reported that PSF counsel suggests that we could register
the "Python" mark in major markets (the EU, Brazil, Japan, Australia,
India, Argentina) for a total of about $20,000. The cost for
registration in China is unknown.

Discussion of the need for trademark registration and the
ramifications followed.

S. Holden: "Do we want to protect the 'Python' trademark as an
international brand?"

S. Holden asked who formally takes care of the PSF's domain
registrations. K. Kaiser replied that we have a listing of domains in
the Board's CVS repository.

S. Holden:

I was wondering if we need to formally delegate this, either to
trademarks or to some new committee? Or perhaps to an officer?

We need to ensure that's properly (and proactively) taken care of,
I think. Every year the pycon.org registration notice comes up
just before the conference and everyone screams, even though MAL
has it on auto-renew.

Criteria for new member nominations was discussed. R. Hettinger
thought that the mix of members has become skewed, with too many
non-core-contributors. "Too many people with voting rights over the
IP who have not had a hand in creating it."

S. Deibel: "It's valid to ask why non-contributors should have a hand
in managing the IP they don't own."

D. Goodger: "The PSF is not solely about Python's IP. The community
is a large part too."

R. Hettinger: "There seems to be no unified notion of what makes for a
PSF member."

S. Holden: "The IP needs protection, but creation and protection are
two entirely separate issues. I see one of the purposes of the
Foundation as removing crap from developers' lives so they can get on
with the task of creating the IP ..."

R. Hettinger: "The criteria seems to be anyone can nominate anyone and
it seems to just get approved."

M. von Löwis: "I think it's not the nomination that is the problem,
but the automatic approval."

T. Peters: "Members /have/ voted down nominations, just not often."

Several Directors suggested that this was a topic suitable for
discussion on the PSF-members mailing list. R. Hettinger agreed to
move the discussion there.

The professional quote was ~$44K, for the core 3 days only. For
tutorials also, the cost would double, making it too expensive
in my opinion.

We have a proposal for 5 days (tutorials & conference), run by A/V
volunteers (not recruited from PyCon attendees) and supervised by
people who ran DebConf. They've done some test runs, and the
results look very good.

S. Holden: "David: I think we have to take your advice here and give
the volunteers one more chance to provide professional quality video."

K. Kaiser asked about paid registrations. D. Goodger:

212 people are registered so far. There's always a slow ramp up
followed by lots of activity by the end of early-bird
registration, February 21. I'm not worried about attendance.

The new registration system is working smoothly, no significant
problems reported. (This is in contrast to last year, when there
were huge problems with PayPal.) Kurt has fully verified our
Google Checkout account."